Report on the investigation of the engine room fire on RMS St Helena 25 August 2000 Marine Accident Investigation Branch First Floor, Carlton House Carlton Place Southampton SO15 2DZ Report No 19/2001 Extract from The Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 1999 The fundamental purpose of investigating an accident under these Regulations is to determine its circumstances and the causes with the aim of improving the safety of life at sea and the avoidance of accidents in the future. It is not the purpose to apportion liability, nor, except so far as is necessary to achieve the fundamental purpose, to apportion blame. CONTENTS Page GLOSSARY SYNOPSIS 1 SECTION 1 - FACTUAL INFORMATION 2 1.1 Details of vessel and incident 2 1.2 Narrative 4 1.3 The vessel and her service 5 1.4 Engineering personnel 5 1.5 Manning arrangements 7 1.6 Standing orders 7 SECTION 2 - ANALYSIS 8 2.1 Engine inspections 8 2.2 Fire-fighting 8 2.3 Manning and certification 9 2.4 Engine room watch alarms 11 2.5 The Code of Practice 11 SECTION 3 - CONCLUSIONS 13 3.1 Findings 13 SECTION 4 - RECOMMENDATIONS 14 GLOSSARY BST - British summer time CP - Controllable pitch (propeller) GMDSS - Global Maritime Distress and Safety System ISM - International Safety Management (Code) kW - kilowatt MAIB - Marine Accident Investigation Branch MCA - Maritime and Coastguard Agency MCR - Machinery Control Room RMS - Royal mail ship rpm - Revolutions per minute SOLAS - Safety of Life at Sea (Convention 1974) UK - United Kingdom UMS - Unmanned machinery space UTC - Universal time co-ordinated SYNOPSIS At 0108 on 25 August 2000 the UK-registered Class I passenger ship, RMS St Helena, left Cardiff for Tenerife on the first leg of a voyage to the South Atlantic. At about 1325 that afternoon, in an effort to locate a coolant leak, the watchkeeping engineer lifted a rocker box cover on the starboard main engine. This is common practice on the vessel. As he did so, oil sprayed from beneath the cover and impinged on the cladding of the engine’s exhaust, where it ignited. The engineer immediately closed the cover, raised the alarm and hurried to the machinery control room (MCR) from where he stopped the engine. Meanwhile daywork engine room ratings extinguished the fire using a portable extinguisher. There was no significant damage and no one was injured. Later inspection revealed that a flexible oil pipe inside the rocker box had failed. When the rocker box cover was lifted, oil from the faulty pipe sprayed on to the exhaust. The vessel’s three watchkeeping engineer officers maintain single-handed watches; no ratings are part of the watch. The owners have written permission from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to operate in this fashion. Nonetheless, this does contravene the vessel’s Safe Manning Certificate, issued by the MCA, which specifies three assistant watchkeepers in addition to the watchkeeping engineer officers. Therefore, on 24 November 2000, the MAIB issued the MCA with an interim recommendation to address this inconsistency. It was recommended that the MCA reviews its acceptance of the single-man engineering watch system presently being operated on RMS St Helena. RMS St Helena’s owners are recommended to consider making it a requirement that when the vessel is at sea, at least a second person is present in the engine room when any enclosure from which flammable gas, vapour or liquid can escape is opened. 1 SECTION 1 - FACTUAL INFORMATION 1.1 DETAILS OF VESSEL AND ACCIDENT NAME : RMS St Helena (see Figure 1) Port of registry : London Official number : 718836 Type : Class I passenger/cargo Gross tonnage : 6,767 Registered power : 6532kW Passenger capacity : 132 Date built : 1990 Builders : A P Appledore (Aberdeen) Ltd York Place Aberdeen Owners : Curnow Shipping Ltd. 48-50 Killigrew Street Falmouth Cornwall TR11 3AP Main engines : Two Mirrlees type 6 K-Major, each coupled to a controllable pitch propeller Date of accident : 25 August 2000 Position : 49°36.3’N 006°10.9’W Type : Engine room fire Injuries : None Damage : None Note: All times quoted are BST = (UTC + 1hour) 2 Figure 1 St Helena RMS 3 1.2 NARRATIVE At 0108 on 25 August 2000, RMS St Helena left Cardiff for Tenerife on the first leg of a voyage to the South Atlantic. Twelve hours later she had cleared the Scilly Isles and its traffic separation zones and was heading south. During the morning the 8-12 watchkeeping engineer had noted a loss of coolant from the main engine valve cooling system, which required him to top up the system. Later that morning the starboard main engine was stopped to renew a leaking joint on a crankcase explosion door. During this stop the chief engineer lifted each rocker box cover on this engine in an effort to locate the cause of the coolant loss. He was unsuccessful. The starboard main engine was restarted, checked, run up to 600rpm and its shaft generator put on load. At about 1325 that afternoon, an engine room rating noticed liquid seeping from the top of the starboard main engine. He reported this to the watchkeeping third engineer. Recalling the earlier efforts to locate a leak on the valve cooling system, the third engineer telephoned the chief engineer to report. He was told to attempt to find the source of this leakage. The third engineer slackened the securing screws on No 4 rocker box cover to ensure there was no overpressure. He then completely undid the screws and lifted the cover slightly, hingeing it about its aft edge. As he did so, a fan of oil sprayed from the rocker box on to the adjacent enclosure for the exhaust manifold, where it ignited. He dropped the cover and ran through the workshop to the MCR, operated the engine’s emergency stop, activated the engineers’ emergency call alarm and made a brief verbal report by intercom to the bridge. The time was 1327. The port main engine continued to run. Meanwhile an engine room rating tackled the fire with a 9-litre foam portable extinguisher. Another rating rigged a hose. Before the third engineer returned from the MCR, the fire had been extinguished. The fire caused no significant damage. The loss of output from the starboard shaft generator caused some interruption to the vessel’s lighting. This prompted the electrician to rush to the engine room, to be joined shortly after by the chief, second and fourth engineers responding to the emergency alarm. A leaking flexible lubricating oil pipe was found in No 4 rocker box. This was considered to have caused the oil to spray from the rocker box when the cover was lifted. After repairs, the engine was restarted and returned to service at 1405. 4 1.3 THE VESSEL AND HER SERVICE RMS St Helena is a UK registered Class 1 passenger vessel plying between the UK, Ascension Island, South Africa and the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. She is of 6767gt, built in 1990 and has two Mirrlees, in-line, six cylinder four stroke, diesel main engines. Each main engine has a shaft generator and drives a controllable pitch propeller (CPP) through a reduction gearbox. The main engines can be started and stopped from the MCR, or at a local control panel. Each engine can also be stopped locally by operating its governor control lever. The local control panel of the starboard engine is on lower plate level, to starboard and aft of the engine. Its local governor control lever is also at lower plate level, at the aft end of the engine on its inboard, port, side. The MCR is on the starboard side of the engine room, at the level of the main engines’ rocker box covers, and one level above lower plate level. It has one access door at its forward end directly into the engine room. Its aft access door leads into the workshop space where a second door leads into the engine room. Hinged covers enclose the valve rocker gear of the main engines. One cover per cylinder. The top of the enclosure of the exhaust manifold is level with the top of these rocker covers. The exhaust’s enclosure consists of a series of metal covers which are not gas tight (see Figure 2). The fuel valves are positioned in a small cut-out area of the rocker boxes. Both these and the exhaust valves are liquid cooled. The coolant pipes for the exhaust valves pass into the rocker boxes and then to the valve cages by pipes which include short flexible sections. Some lengths of lubricating oil pipes within the rocker boxes are also flexible (see Figure 3). 1.4 ENGINEERING PERSONNEL The vessel has four certificated engineer officers: the chief, second, third and fourth engineers. With the exception of the chief engineer, they each take a watch on the ‘conventional’ four hours on, eight hours off pattern. Three engine room ratings are also carried. These are described as assistant watchkeepers on the Safe Manning Certificate. However, they keep no watches and are employed on daywork hours only. Typically these hours are between 0800 and 1900 Monday to Friday, and between 0800 and 1700 Saturday and Sunday. There is some variation in these hours on days when the vessel arrives or leaves a port. 5 Figure 2 Rocker cover Exhaust enclosure Figure 3 6 Rocker box with cover raised 1.5 MANNING ARRANGEMENTS The vessel has a Safe Manning Certificate that sets out a requirement for three assistant watchkeepers to be part of the engine room complement. This was issued in October 1991.